


of Becoming

by Eldritch



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV Second Person, Pacifist Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 13:57:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5250701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eldritch/pseuds/Eldritch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You climb the mountain because you're a monster.</p><p>Everyone calls you one, at least, and honestly, you've given up correcting them. Who knows? Maybe they're right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of Becoming

**> LOAD**

You climb the mountain because you're a monster.

Everyone calls you one, at least, and honestly, you've given up correcting them. Who knows? Maybe they're right. It would explain why nobody, not even your own parents, have ever wanted you around. If you're a monster, then you don't have to cry. Who ever heard of a crybaby monster? It's so much easier to be angry instead. The next time one of the other kids knocks you to the ground and goes in for the punch, instead of trying to make yourself small enough to disappear, you yell and grab their arm and bite them. Your teeth are short and blunt and all-too human, but he screams like you've got a mouthful of knives.

"What a freak," his friend hisses, and they all run away. _They_ run away from _you_.

You laugh and you laugh and you laugh until tears are streaming down your face, salt stinging the scrapes that cover it.

After that, you practice your monster faces in the mirror every day. You've always tried to imitate everyone else's expressions. A smile, a scowl, a look of surprise -- the things that come easily to everyone else that you've never quite gotten the hang of.

"Chara can't even smile right," they used to say in the kind of whispers that meant they wanted you to overhear, and snicker behind their hands.

It turns out smiling is a whole lot more natural when you stop trying to copy everyone around you and look to your picture books instead. My, what a big smile you have. The better to scare you with, my dear.

The next family they put you with lives in right near the base of Mt. Ebott. They claim they'll take good care of you. That they've worked with 'problem' kids before. They're nice enough, but then again, so are the flowers out in back, and the flowers don't try to _talk_ to you. You ignore the family because you know their attitude won't last. You know from experience that it'll be easier for everyone when they stop pretending you're not a monster.

They tell you not to climb the mountain, because it's dangerous. There are wild animals. It's geographically unstable. They don't tell you that other monsters live there, but you've heard what the kids say at your new school. People who climb Mt. Ebott don't come back, and it's not because of sinkholes.

"You should do us all a favor and disappear," one of the girls says at lunchtime, after 'accidentally' sticking her leg out to trip you. There's chocolate milk all over your shirt and ketchup on your face. Everyone laughs.

"Maybe I will," you say, and give her your biggest smile. Then you grab her by her ponytail and force her face into her mac'n'cheese. This time you're the only one who laughs.

And then you leave. You don't wait for the lunchroom monitors to come over or for the principal to get involved. You just leave. It's refreshing.

You climb the mountain because being human _sucks_. Monsters have to be better.

* * *

You leave the mountain because you're a human.

Now that you've met actual monsters, you understand that. It's not that they're shaped differently than you, with horns and claws and fur and scales. You've never cared much for what a body says about someone, after all. No. Real monsters just have something you don't. You're not sure how to put it into words. It might be kindness, maybe. A desire to believe the best in anyone, even you. They _care_ , more than anyone else you've ever met. If you stayed with your new family, the first family that's ever really made you feel like you belong, you know you'd be happy.

It makes you want to cry and scream at the top of your lungs over how _stupid_ they are. 

What if someone other than you had fallen down here? A real human, through and through, armed with the same careless cruelty that's seen you left bruised and muddy more times than you can count. Asriel wouldn't have stood a chance, the big crybaby. 

It's easy to see why the monsters lost the war.

So maybe it's best that you're human after all. Monsters never would have been able to come up with your plan. They certainly wouldn't have been able to carry it out. But you've spent your whole life learning how to be bad, to be hard and mean, to stand up to bigger kids and stop caring about the consequences. You know you can do this. 

You can save the monsters, because you have a human soul. It's going to hurt Asriel, you know it is, but he needs to grow up anyway. Learn how the world outside the Underground works. You've told him before, it's kill or be killed out there.

When you leave the mountain, you finally look like the monster everyone's always claimed you are, but as intent as you are on your goal, you've never felt more human.

* * *

You don't really know what you are, anymore.

It's hard to tell how long it's been, in this floating half-existence you've found. Stupid Asriel, who learned his lesson too late, keeps resetting. All you can do is watch, and pretend that there's a strange feeling of despairing guilt howling through the carefully-built brick wall of your annoyance at what he's become. He deserves it, since he's the one who screwed everything up in the first place and no matter how much you shout yourself hoarse calling him names, he can't hear you anymore.

Other humans come, like you knew they would. They never last long. You take some comfort in that. But they've already changed the Underground with their presence. The monsters aren't quite so naïve anymore. Or maybe that's your fault. You should be proud to see them guarding themselves against humans with swords and spears instead of crumbling into smiling, well-intentioned dust.

It makes you sick, and you have no idea how to fix things.

It's hard to care when the seventh human since you shows up. You think for a minute that you won't even bother watching this one. At least when they die, the barrier will be broken. The monsters will go free, and they might even hold their own against the humans this time. Good riddance to them both.

There's something strange about this human, though. As you watch them gingerly pick themselves up from the patch of flowers they landed on -- you've started hating those flowers, and can't remember why you thought they seemed nice in the first place -- something catches your attention. You're not sure what it is. Something about the bandaid peeling off from the scraped knee. The dirt under their fingernails. It's a nagging feeling that makes you feel more awake and aware than you have been in who knows how long.

They're familiar. You reach out to them, and you feel them reach back. You were the first human. They're the last. One way or another, whatever actions they take, they'll be finishing what you started.

"Show me how this ends," you whisper.

In response, they display their fear. Their kindness. _Their determination_. They climbed the mountain because they have the loving heart of a monster and the strength of soul of a human. You don't know what they are, and neither do they. 

You feel as though for once it wouldn't be any effort to smile for real.

**> SAVE**   
**> * Chara**

**Author's Note:**

> "Monsters are our children. . . .[they] ask us how we perceive the world, and how we have misrepresented what we have attempted to place. They ask us to reevaluate our cultural assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, our perception of difference, our tolerance towards its expression. They ask us why we have created them."  
> \-- Jeffery Jerome Cohen, "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)"


End file.
